Barry Petchesky

This morning, the Big 12 Conference officially announced a 13-year media deal shared between ABC/ESPN and Fox. But the news had already been reported earlier, yesterday afternoon, by ESPN.com college football reporter Brett McMurphy. That meant, given ESPN's attempts to keep its programming and editorial departments completely separate ("church and state" is how a SportsCenter producer describes it), that McMurphy wasn't just handed a preview version of the press release. Instead he had to do what any reporter would when looking for a statement: reach out to ESPN's PR guy.